Social media marketing is a process and like all processes, it requires a structured approach. Companies that follow a disciplined social media process generate leads, promote their brands and develop customer loyalty. Here are a few tips to help structure your social media marketing process for success:
Aim Before You Shoot
Growth companies know the characteristics of their ideal customers. They know the industries, annual revenues and buying profiles of their top customers. They know who within those firms buys their products the job titles, demographics and pain points of those buyers. They also know which social media platforms their ideal customer uses. Step one in your process is to develop profiles of your ideal customers and to use social media to develop trust with your prospects by helping them solve problems.
Set Goals and Measure Progress
Growth companies set goals and measure them on the appropriate frequency (generally quarterly for a small to mid-sized business.) They set goals for followers, posts, re-tweets and blog page views and measure them with marketing automation software. They dont stop there they measure leads and customers that are developed through their social media marketing process. They do more of what works and less of what doesnt.
Use Social Media to Become a Trusted Advisor
Growth companies use a strategic formula to provide the proper mixture of content to their target audience. Most of their posts are of other peoples contents links to blogs, videos and news content that help their ideal customers understand and solve problems. They write blogs weekly or more frequently on topics relevant to their ideal customer and share them through social media. Lastly, they occasionally promote links to their landing pages and other sales-related information occasionally means one of every fifteen social media posts.
Make Social Media a Daily Activity
Growth companies devote time every day to manage their social media marketing processes. They monitor social media platforms for mentions of their company, their customers and their industry. They interact with their social media followers; thanking them for following or re-tweeting content and reacting quickly and politely to dissatisfied customers. They read and comment on blogs and LinkedIn groups. Growth companies that are successfully using social media devote 25-50% of a professional, full-time employee to daily social media management.
View Social Media as a Tactic, Not a Strategy
Growth companies use social media as a tactic to develop leads and customers. They view social media as one tactic in their sales and marketing strategy and integrate it with the other tactics. They know the proper time to have a sales person reach out to a lead and they nurture the lead until it is sales-ready.
If you follow these tips and do them consistently, you will be successful. It wont happen overnight, but if you do the right things every day, you will outsell your competition and grow your bottom line.
